Titles

DebHR

Please give me your opinion on the ranking of the titles: Supervisor, Coordinator and Specialist. We use all of these at my company and the leadership is now questioning the appropriate ranking of these three titles. Any help will be appreciated.

Dutch2

Deb:
Welcome...
I guess it would depend upon what business you are in. We are in the finance business and based upon our "ranking" I would have to say just has you have them listed: 1. Supervisor, 2. Coordinator, and 3. Specailist. We have specialist doing specific tasks, a coordinator is similar to a lead position and the Supervisor is over the dept. Having said that, I can see how based upon the specific job duties and responsibilites at any given business each title they could be in any order.

NeedCoffee

I agree with Dutch - in my line of work, they would be ranked as listed. However, I could easily see how you could have a Program Coordinator who oversees specialists that are managed by supervisors...

E Wart

I HATE Titles. They are such a "ego" thing. They don't have a thing to do with what a person does, how well they perform, and how much they are paid. I wish we could do away with them all together. (I loved it once when I met with someone and they gave me their business card and there was no title. I asked what their title was and they said that they didn't use them. That everyone was responsible for helping the customer, getting the job done, and assiting the company in making money (and existing). Turns out it was the person that I would say was 2nd in command of very large company. I thought that this was showing that they meant what they said... the upper folks didn't have titles.
Back to your question. I would say just depends and again wouldn't say that the job titles should be "ranked" as to which was "more important" but would suggest that they be tied more to what the person does. For some reason, I think of a Coordinator as more a clerical position (but could be a very large responsibility of a large project) and a Specialist as more trained and more responsibility, but for a more limited scope. Obviously the supv. must supervise, but depends on who they supv.and how many.

E Wart